


blood: a ghost story

by ghosthunter



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Alternate Universe - Not Hockey Player(s), Body Horror, EXTREMELY HAUNTED OBJECT, M/M, a stefon skit of horror, graphic descriptions of bodies post-mortem, i swear it has a happy ending just watch to the end, suicide TW
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 03:47:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16468103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghosthunter/pseuds/ghosthunter
Summary: Andre believed in ghosts. Andre believed he saw them.





	blood: a ghost story

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! one day jarka came to me after finishing the haunting of hill house and said "i want to write something inspired by this" and i'm like, lol, hill house au, and then this monstrosity was born. so thanks to her for the idea and the cheerleading and for the beta, but honestly we're all very lucky this is not some kind of nightmare on elm street au. i guess there's always next year.
> 
> since this is a hill house AU, please heed both the major character death and suicide content warnings, they are walking hand in hand. full content warnings can be found in the end notes.

They moved into the house the summer Dmitry was fourteen.

His dad remarried when he was twelve, and the house they’d lived in before just wasn’t big enough for seven people crammed into it, two adults and five boys barreling toward becoming teenagers. If they moved out of the city, his dad had explained, they could get a bigger house, they could have more space.

On one hand, Dmitry didn’t love the idea of leaving all his friends behind. On the other, he really liked the idea of not having to share a bedroom with Evgeny anymore. He’d had his own room for years, until his dad had married Nicke, and Christian and Andre had moved in, and they had gotten Evgeny’s room, and Evgeny had moved into Dmitry’s room.

They move into the house and it feels huge and they all have their own bedrooms, even if they’re smaller than Dmitry’s room in the old house was. It’s summertime and he misses his friends, and misses the community pool on days when it’s really hot and he and Evgeny set up fans in the living room and lay on the floor.

There’s a stream in the woods behind the house, and within the first week they come home well after dark and Nicke yells at all five of them for coming home so late, missing dinner, and being covered in mud. His dad puts a hand on Nicke’s arm and tells them that they just made Nicke worry, and that’s why he’s upset.

Dmitry and Evgeny sit at the kitchen table and eat their dinner, reheated, while their brothers take turns in the bathrooms. Then it’s up to bed, early for the summer, because Dmitry knows that they’re in trouble. He lays in bed, listening to the sound of footsteps in the hallway as his dad and Nicke make sure the other kids are fed, bathed, and put to bed. He listens until the footsteps start to disappear, hears his dad laughing in the hallway, loud and boisterous, and Nicke shushing him as Dmitry drifts off to sleep.

He wakes up to someone tapping on the wall. There’s no rhythm to it, no pattern, the tapping staccato and annoying, shaking Dmitry from sleep. Jakub’s room is on the other side of the wall, and he taps back, letting Jakub know he hears it, and as a warning to stop.

The tapping doesn’t stop.

Dmitry sighs and flips his sheets back, getting out of bed and padding down the hall to Jakub’s room. He’s the youngest at nine, and his bedroom door is cracked just a bit, enough that Dmitry can see the light from the nightlight by the door. Dmitry pushes the door the rest of the way open and goes inside.

“Jakub,” he says, his voice quiet. “What do you want?”

Jakub says something, curled on his side with his back to the door, his bed in the corner against two walls, the head against the wall he shares with Dmitry’s bedroom. Dmitry sighs and walks the rest of the way to the bed, reaching out and grabbing his brother by the shoulder. Jakub blinks up at him sleepily.

“What?” he asks.

“Don’t pretend. Why are you tapping on the wall?” Dmitry asks him.

“I’m not,” Jakub says. “I was sleeping.”

“So was I, until you started tapping,” Dmitry tells him.

That’s when he hears the tapping again, this time coming from his own room. Dmitry knows that there’s not anyone in his room. He doesn’t think, anyway. He doesn’t think any of their brothers could have gotten from this room, past Dmitry, and into Dmitry’s room.

Then the tapping turns to banging.

Both Dmitry and Jakub scream.

 

Dmitry jerks awake.

He’s alone in his bedroom, sweat cold on his skin as he wakes up from something he’s pretty sure is a memory. He remembers the first night anything weird happened in the house, going into Jakub’s room and shaking him awake, the pounding on the walls that made it feel like the entire house was shaking. Their dad had burst into the room at the sound of their screams, found them huddled together on Jakub’s bed. Jakub had been crying.

It’s been a long time since Dmitry thought about any of that, much less dreamt about it. He used to dream about it all the time, when he was still a teenager, after he went to live with his father’s parents, after they moved out of the house.

His phone starts buzzing on the nightstand and he nearly jumps out of his skin.

The display shows the name “Christian”, and a picture of a smiling face pulled from Facebook. Dmitry can’t remember the last time he had a phone conversation with Christian. It’s not that Christian isn’t his stepbrother - his brother, really, in all but blood after what they all went through - it’s just that they don’t talk much. They text each other for birthdays and Dmitry likes Christian’s photos on Facebook.

The fact that Christian is calling him at just past two in the morning, out of the blue, ties a knot of anxiety in Dmitry’s stomach.

“Hello?” Dmitry says, when he answers the phone.

“Dima,” Christian says, and Dmitry isn’t sure how to read the tone of Christian’s voice. He sounds exhausted, for starters. But there’s so much more there that Dmitry can’t begin to understand.

“What’s wrong?” Dmitry asks him, because he knows there’s something. It’s so late, and the way Christian sounds. Dmitry knows that something is wrong. 

“It’s Andre,” Christian says, and when he exhales, his breath catches.

Dmitry doesn’t have to ask anything else. He knows.

 

By the time Evgeny is thirteen, he’s seen two parents buried.

His mother died when he was eight, leaving his father to raise him, Dmitry, and Jakub alone. His father held Jakub on his hip, all of six years old and his face buried in their father’s shoulder, not understanding what’s happening.

This time is different.

Jakub stands still between Dmitry and Evgeny and doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything, all three of them dressed in dark suits. Their grandmother, their father’s mother, stands between them and their father further down the bench. Evgeny stares at the back of Christian’s head in front of him, at Andre’s curls. It’s their father in the closed casket at the front of the room.

Christian’s hand grips Andre’s so hard his knuckles are white.

Evgeny wonders why the casket is closed. He doesn’t understand what happened, how they all ended up here. He just remembers them all leaving the house in the night, remembers slipping in the grass as they ran across the yard to the car. He remembers screaming.

It all feels like a dream, and he doesn’t understand how Nicke is suddenly gone. He knows how death works; he knows how his mother died. He knows what people are saying, that it was his dad who killed Nicke, or that Nicke killed himself. But that doesn’t make any sense to Evgeny, and there’s no one he can ask. Every time he tries to ask his grandmother, she just shakes her head and tells him there are things he’s not meant to know.

In the hotel they stayed in the night they left the house, he remembers Jakub sucking his thumb, years too old, and Andre saying that the house hurt Papa.

Evgeny doesn’t believe in ghosts. He doesn’t know what to believe.

 

The baby crying shakes Evgeny out of sleep.

He stares at the ceiling for a second, trying to reconcile the sound with it being reality, versus whatever he’s been dreaming about. Next to him, his husband starts to stir.

“I’ll get her,” he says, and swings his legs over the side of the bed. Marcus makes a noise of agreement, assent, and continues to sleep. He’s probably drooling, face down in their pillows.

Evgeny slips across the hallway to their daughter’s room, where she’s crying. He checks her diaper, then settles her in against his shoulder as he walks down the hallway to the kitchen to get a bottle for her. He’s leaned against the kitchen counter, the baby quiet, the house quiet. He sees something move out of the corner of his eye, and looks up, expecting to see Marcus standing in the doorway.

Instead, Andre is there, and Evgeny almost drops the baby.

“Andre?” he says. “How did you get in here? Are you okay?”

Evgeny talks to Andre on the phone a lot, texts with him a lot, but it’s rare that they see each other. He’s still finishing college in another city - he’s changed his major a couple of times, he’s not sure what he wants to do. Evgeny can’t understand why Andre would show up without letting him know he was coming to town. Unless he came to visit Jakub? But still, he’s in Evgeny’s house in the middle of the night.

“Andre?” Evgeny repeats, when Andre says nothing, doesn’t move. Evgeny shifts the baby against his shoulder and takes a step forward. “What are you doing? Say something.”

The baby shifts restlessly, reacting to Evgeny’s unease. Evgeny holds her tighter, closer to him, ready to protect her. Something’s wrong. “Andre?” he asks, once more, his voice rising in volume and pitch. He’s scared.

Andre’s mouth opens.

Blood spills out. Evgeny screams, and the baby starts to cry.

By the time Marcus stumbles into the kitchen, disoriented and brandishing a hockey stick, Evgeny is sitting on the floor with his back against the cabinets, trying to calm the screaming baby, tears rolling silently down his cheeks as he rocks her. Marcus lets the stick clatter to the floor as he hurries over and kneels on the floor next to Evgeny.

“Zhenya,” Marcus says, reaching out and sweeping tears off Evgeny’s cheeks. “What’s wrong? What happened? Why did you scream?”

“Andre was - “ Evgeny says, but he can’t manage to make the words come out. He’s never had a problem saying exactly what’s on his mind, but now words are failing him. “He was here.”

“What?” Marcus asks, frowning.

“He was here,” Evgeny says. “He was in the doorway, and I asked him how he got in here, and his mouth opened and blood poured out.”

Marcus stares at him, blinking slowly. “What?” he asks. “How?”

“I don’t know,” Evgeny says.

“Is he still here?” Marcus asks, moving to get up off the floor, as though he’s going to search the house.

“I don’t think he ever was,” Evgeny says.

Evgeny can’t explain the blood splattered on the floor in the kitchen doorway.

 

“One, two, three, …”

Jakub runs between the trees, his feet slipping on fallen, rotting leaves as he goes, giggling even as he stumbles. He reaches the creek bed and turns, because they’re not allowed to go past it. Never, ever go past the creek bed, he remembers his dad saying. He also remembers Nicke saying not to even go as far as the creek, but his dad knows that he can’t stop the boys from getting wet and muddy there.

Past the creek is too far. Too far into the woods, too far away from home. Jakub runs along the bank until he reaches the cave.

He thinks he’s the only one of them that knows about the cave.

It’s small. It’s not that deep. It smells a little weird, but it’s a great hiding place for hide and seek. Andre and Christian have never found him here. All he has to do is squirm past the tree that partially blocks the entrance and no one can find him. It’s the best hide and seek spot.

He waits until he can hear Andre and Christian laughing and yelling before he comes out and brags that they couldn’t find him. He’s the best hide and seek player in the family.

Until one day he can’t get out.

The tree shifts on his way in, and he knows instantly that he’s not able to get back out past it. He doesn’t know if Christian or Andre is close enough to hear if he screams for help. He knows that they’re not coming, because he yells for them and neither of them come.

He sits down on the floor to think. If the tree moved because of his weight, then his weight should be able to move it. He sits close to the tree and braces his feet against it, then pushes with all his strength. The tree shifts slightly, but not enough to get him out.

Something moves out of the corner of his eye.

He turns. There’s never been anything in the cave with him before. He’s been hiding there all summer, winning game after game of hide and seek. Now, there’s something reaching out from the dark. Something reaching toward him. A hand, grasping.

Jakub starts screaming.

 

It’s late, and Jakub’s drunk.

In fairness, Jakub is drunk quite a lot - most nights of the week, especially if he’s still up past midnight. So it’s late, they’re at a party, and Jakub’s drunk. He pushes up in Madison’s space, tells Madison to take him home.

He’s got a little, shitty apartment just off campus and it’s cold outside as they’re walking back, Madison’s arm slung low around Jakub’s waist, keeping him mostly upright. They end up stopped in the stairwell, under the harsh neon of the lights, Madison keeping Jakub pinned against the wall with his hand and a knee pressed between Jakub’s thighs.

“Take me to bed,” Jakub says, his words slightly slurred. Madison’s not exactly sober, either, and he agrees, and they stumble upstairs. Jakub trips over a pair of sneakers just inside his door and almost falls. They both tumble onto the couch, laughing.

They manage to make it to the bedroom, and the sex is sloppy, leaving both of them sweaty and covered in come. Jakub passes out face down on the bed, one arm dangling toward the floor.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been asleep when his phone starts ringing, the sound piercing through his skull. His eyes won’t focus enough to read the name on the display when he finally gets the phone in his hand, but he recognizes the picture as being from Evgeny’s wedding.

“Zhenya,” he says, instead of saying hello. “It’s nighttime.”

“Jakub,” the voice on the other end of the line says, which is not Evgeny’s voice at all. “Zhenya asked me to call you.”

Hearing Marcus’s voice in the middle of the night, from Evgeny’s number, somehow pierces through the haze of alcohol in Jakub’s mind. Alarm bells are suddenly ringing inside his brain.

“Is Zhenya okay?” Jakub asks, trying to push himself up on the bed. His whole body feels too heavy, too sticky, too gross. “Is the baby okay?”

“They’re fine,” Marcus tells him. “You just - can you come to the house, please? I think - Zhenya asked if you would come to the house.”

“Right now?” Jakub says.

“Please,” Marcus says.

“Is everything okay?” Jakub asks. He manages to get himself sitting upright.

“No,” Marcus says. “But it’s better you hear it in person.”

“I’ll be there soon,” Jakub says, and leaves the phone on the bed, not bothering to disconnect the call as he stumbles into the bathroom to throw up.

 

The new house is weird.

Christian hates it. There are always noises that the rest of the family doesn’t seem to be able to hear, and he’s never warm even though it’s summer. He’s cold even when Evgeny and Dmitry are stretched out on the floor with oscillating fans aimed at them.

Papa just tells him it’s because he’s different than them, is all.

Christian’s always been quiet, compared to his brother, who is loud and outgoing and loves attention. Andre’s wrestling on the floor with Jakub, both of them laughing and breathless. Evgeny and Dmitry have a bowl of popcorn between them where they’re sitting on the loveseat. They’re all supposed to be watching a movie, Sasha and Papa sitting together on the couch with Christian curled up against Papa’s side.

He falls asleep during the movie.

He dreams about another family in the house, a mother and a father, a grandmother, two kids. He dreams about the mother holding a throw pillow over the grandmother’s face, right here in the living room. It’s a different couch, an ugly olive floral pattern.

She’s fighting against the lady’s arms, and she can’t breathe. She’s too old and frail to get away.

Christian jerks awake, falling off the couch. He can’t breathe either, suddenly, and his hands come to his throat, fingers scratching until the air comes back. He blinks up at Papa’s face, worried as he brushes Christian’s hair off his face.

“You’re okay,” Papa tells him. Andre and Jakub have stopped wrestling. “You can breathe.”

His hands are gentle as he guides Christian’s hands away from his throat.

After that, Christian avoids falling asleep in the living room.

 

Christian hates the airport.

He hates all the smells, he hates that everyone seems to be in a bad mood, and most of all he hates security, when everyone touches so many of his things - and especially him. And somehow every time he goes through the scanner, they have some reason they need to pat him down, some reason to touch him.

He hates for anyone to touch him.

He has reading to do for class and he can’t concentrate, and his coffee tastes like cigarette ash in his mouth, but he keeps drinking it anyway because his stomach is twisted into knots so tight that he doesn’t think he’d be able to even consider eating anything, much less keep it down.

Evgeny has been texting him constantly. Someone will pick him up at the airport. Jakub is with them at Evgeny’s house. Dmitry will also be flying in that afternoon. Dad - Alex, he’s not Christian’s father, and hasn’t been for years, not since Papa died and Christian and Andre went to live with Papa’s brother - landed that morning and is getting a hotel room.

Evgeny is handling the funeral arrangements. _So you don’t have to,_ he tells Christian, via text. He wasn’t Evgeny’s brother, Christian thinks bitterly. He wasn’t Evgeny’s blood. And Christian hates himself for even thinking that way, because those were - are - his brothers, even if they’re not blood related.

Christian knows he’s an asshole, sometimes.

He turns his headphones up and leans back in his seat, looking up at the screens, waiting for his flight to board. He wants to wake up and for this to all be a bad dream. He wants his phone screen to light up with Andre’s name and the stupid selfie he took to program as his contact photo in Christian’s phone.

He wants Andre to not be dead.

The police had come to his apartment to let him know that the body had been found, the body had been identified. That Andre had gone to the house, and that Andre had killed himself.

Just like Papa.

Christian swallows against the burn in the back of his throat but he won’t let himself cry. Not sitting in the airport, not where people can see him. Not where it might cause someone to ask him a question, make the whole story come pouring out. And the last thing he wants is for some well-meaning stranger to try and touch him. At least he’s wearing long sleeves.

Being on the flight is even worse, because he still can’t concentrate on anything he should be reading, and he can’t sleep, because every time he closes his eyes all he can see is Andre, the way he must have looked when they found him. Christian can imagine it - his body laying there, the blood that might have spilled out when he hit the floor and cracked his skull.

Christian can imagine the way it sounded so vividly, he gags.

He turns the music up even louder and tries to lose himself in it. He doesn’t even care about the look his seatmate gives him.

The flight is endless and he’s drained when they finally land, and he struggles to get his bag and get out of the airport. He recognizes Evgeny’s car, but Evgeny’s husband is driving instead.

“He’s sorry he couldn’t come pick you up,” Marcus explains. “But with Jakub there, and his dad coming in this morning, and the baby, things are. He’s a little.” Marcus waves his hand absently as he looks over his shoulder then pulls away from the curb. “Stressed.”

“It’s fine,” Christian says, and just stares out the window. He could have taken a cab, it would have been fine. No one had to come and pick him up, but Evgeny had insisted. Just like Evgeny had insisted on not letting Christian get a hotel, and Christian staying at Evgeny’s place.

Christian’s not good at making small talk, and Marcus seems to be fine with driving in silence. Christian at least can appreciate that.

Evgeny is in the kitchen when they arrive at the house, the baby in a swing and Jakub sitting at the kitchen table, the remnants of a sandwich sitting in front of him. He looks pale and tired, but less tired than Evgeny does.

“Chris,” Evgeny says, wiping his hands off on his jeans and coming around the kitchen island to wrap Christian in a hug. Christian freezes up in his arms, hating to be hugged, even by his family. “Are you okay?”

“You know he hates hugs,” Jakub says from the table.

“Too bad, I’m hugging him,” Evgeny says.

“It’s for Evgeny, not for me,” Christian says, and pats Evgeny awkwardly on the back. When he’s finally let loose, he’s able to move himself and his suitcase out of the doorway to let Marcus the rest of the way into his own house.

“Can I hug you for me?” Jakub asks. He hasn’t got up from the table yet, but at least he’s asking.

“I guess,” Christian says, and stands still while Jakub gets up and winds his arms around Christian. He’s taller than Christian remembers, and it’s been a long time. He lets Jakub hug him tight and he feels the burning of tears at the back of his throat again.

“Are you hungry?” Evgeny asks. “I can make you a sandwich.”

“Please let him feed you,” Marcus says. “He needs something to keep him busy.”

“Be quiet,” Evgeny says, but he’s started making a sandwich anyway, so Christian supposes he’ll eat it. Or Marcus will. Someone will.

“What time does Dmitry get in?” Christian asks, once Jakub lets him go and moves to sit back down at the table.

“Some time this afternoon,” Jakub says. “Zhenya has the times. Then dad’s going to come over and Zhenya’s going to make us dinner.”

“He is not,” Marcus says.

“I am,” Evgeny says. “I need something to do. WIth my hands. And you got mad the last time I started making jokes.”

“Yeah, because they were bad jokes,” Jakub says.

“Where do you want me to sleep?” Christian breaks in, because all of the talking is killing his head. “So I can put my stuff away.”

“I’ll show you,” Jakub says, jumping up once more.

“Then come back and eat this sandwich!” Evgeny yells as they walk out of the room and head up the stairs.

Jakub is quiet as he leads Christian to the bedroom. It’s pretty clear that he’s sharing the room with Jakub - Christian wonders if Dmitry will then end up crashing on the couch, or if they’ll move the baby into the master bedroom. He’s not going to ask. It doesn’t matter.

“How did it happen?” Jakub asks, as soon as they’re alone. “Zhenya didn’t tell me.”

“Because I didn’t tell him,” Christian says. “So he couldn’t tell you.”

“Was it an accident? I just - I need to know,” Jakub says.

“Yeah, it was an accident that Papa and Sasha bought that house,” Christian says, and watches Jakub’s eyes go wide. “That was the only accident that ever happened.”

“Chris,” Jakub says, his voice gone soft and scared. “No.”

“He killed himself,” Christian says, his voice flat, hollow. “The same as Papa. The same place, the same way.”

“Chris,” Jakub says again.

The burning knot in Christian’s throat breaks then, and he sits down on the edge of the bed. A sob slips out, and this time he doesn’t freeze up when Jakub wraps arms around him tightly. He just buries his face into Jakub’s shoulder and lets himself cry.

 

At ten years old, Andre is scared of the dark.

He wasn’t, he doesn’t think, not really, before they moved into this house. Before, he slept through the night and didn’t think about the things that might be lurking just outside the radius of the night-light plugged in next to his door.

Now he sees things moving in the shadows. Sasha tells him it’s his imagination working overtime, that he’s been listening to the other boys too much - the story Dmitry tells about the banging on the walls in the night, when no one heard anything but him and Jakub screaming. The tree that fell and trapped Jakub in the cave by the creek and he swears there was something in there with him, something that reached out and grabbed him.

Sasha tells them they have overactive imaginations. Papa’s mouth just presses into a line and he changes the subject. Andre thinks Papa sees things sometimes too, but he doesn’t want to admit it. Andre wishes he would admit it. Andre thinks that if Papa would just admit it, then maybe Sasha would believe them. Maybe they wouldn’t have to stay in the house.

Papa doesn’t admit it, so Sasha keeps telling them that they have great imaginations. And Andre keeps seeing the man with the bloody face in his bedroom at night.

Sometimes he’s in the corner. Sometimes he stands at the foot of Andre’s bed. One night, Andre catches sight of his reflection in the bathroom mirror as he’s brushing his teeth. He gets in the most trouble for that one, because toothpaste gets everywhere. Papa makes him clean up the mess even though he’s crying and doesn’t want to go back into the bathroom. Christian ends up helping him, wiping toothpaste and spit off the walls while Andre mops the floor.

Hiding under the blankets doesn’t help. It’s hard to breathe and when he pulls the blanket away, the man is still there, still watching him. His face is covered in blood and it soaks into the shirt he’s wearing. Andre thinks his skull might be caved in on one side, just a little. Andre wants to ask him if that’s how he died, if he knows.

Most of the time Andre can’t do anything but scream.

Sometimes when he can’t make the sound come out, when the man is too close to his bed, he jumps up and runs into another room, climbs into bed with Evgeny, who doesn’t believe he sees anything either, or with Christian, who does, who pets his hair and tells him he’ll keep Andre safe. Andre doesn’t think it’s true; Christian’s only a year older, how can he possibly keep Andre safe?

Christian promises to keep Andre safe. And the man with the bloody face never shows up in Christian’s room.

 

He’s shivering by the time he gets to his apartment door, fumbling with the keys. Andre didn’t expect it to be this cold outside, and hadn’t worn a jacket when he’d gone to work. It sucks even more when he gets into his apartment, because he hadn’t expected the chill and hadn’t turned his heat on. It’s only slightly warmer in his apartment than it was outside.

He flicks the switch for the heat on his way down the hallway to his bedroom and tugs a hoodie from the closet and pulls it on. He’s singing absently along to a song stuck in his head while he reheats leftovers when he sees something out of the corner of his eye.

Andre turns. The man with the bloody face is there, standing silent in the corner of his kitchen. Andre drops the bowl he was holding, scattering leftover lo mein and bits of ceramic across his kitchen floor.

He flees his kitchen without cleaning it up, fumbling with his phone as he hunches down in his bedroom, pulling his blanket up around him. He dials Christian, and the phone rings and rings before eventually kicking over to voicemail.

“He’s here. I saw him in my kitchen - “ Andre blurts out. “I haven’t seen him in so long. Chris, I don’t know what to do. I’m scared - I.”

There’s a loud beep on the line and Andre fumbles the phone away from his ear, ending the call and the message and answering the new incoming call.

“What’s up?” asks Christian’s voice from the other end of the line.

“I was leaving a message, I - “ Andre takes a deep breath. “Remember when I was a kid, before Papa died, and I used to see the man with the bloody face in my bedroom at night?”

“You always used to come running to my room and get into bed with me,” Christian says. There’s a tone of fondness in his voice. “Why are you calling me about that? You haven’t brought that up in years.”

“I just saw him. In my kitchen,” Andre says.

 

Christian plays the voicemail Andre left him for Evgeny while they’re waiting for the funeral director. Between the two of them, they’d decided it was best that they handle the arrangements. Evgeny wants to know exactly what happened, everything they know, and Christian has already heard most of it from the police.

The voicemail is bad. Evgeny tells Christian that Andre probably needed therapy, if he’d never gotten any. Just hearing it almost makes Christian explode, his face turning red, his skin getting hot. Andre may have needed therapy - all of them probably need therapy - but what he really needed was for someone to believe that something was wrong in the first place, and not just write off what he was seeing as a hallucination or a neurosis.

And that’s fine coming from Evgeny, who went to med school and who works as a pathologist and who is around dead bodies all the time and wants to know exactly what killed their little brother. Christian has a degree in psychology, and he knows that it’s more than that, it’s more than the physical wounds that Andre suffered that caused him to die. Christian knows that it goes back farther than this phone call.

“They found him in the foyer,” the funeral director explains, all the information he has comes directly from the police and the coroner upstate. “He was - “ The director stops, looks at them. “Are you sure you’re okay to hear this?”

“I’ve already heard it,” Christian says.

“I need to know,” Evgeny says at the same time. Christian glares at him.

Their funeral director sighs. “They found him in the foyer,” he repeats. “According to the paperwork, the police were called when someone drove past and saw a car parked out front and noted that the front door was open. When they went inside, well. His injuries are consistent with a jump from one of the upper floors.”

“Just like Papa,” Christian murmurs under his breath. Evgeny looks at him, reaches out and takes hold of Christian’s hand. Christian flinches, then flexes his hand and wraps it around Evgeny’s. A truce. For now.

“They estimated he had been there for around 36 hours when he was found,” the director continues. “I can do a lot to cover up what happened, how long he lay there. But the way he fell, the way he hit, his skull was … damaged.”

“Damaged,” Evgeny says.

“Caved in, slightly,” the director says. Christian feels his stomach roll. He hadn’t known that. He’d known that Andre had died from the fall. That the police had already ruled it a suicide, given Andre’s history, the house’s history, and Andre’s history with the house. Because of Papa. “There was a lot of blood, and we’ve cleaned him up, but there’s only so much we’re able to do. He’s never going to look quite right, or quite natural. I understand that a lot of people would like to have an open casket, to say goodbye, but that would…. I would not recommend that.”

“Can we see him?” Evgeny finally asks. “As the family, we can - the five of us together.”

“If the others want to,” Christian says.

“Do you?” Evgeny says. His hand is still gripped tight around Christian’s.

“I have to,” Christian says.

 

They’re playing soccer in the backyard when Papa slips and goes down hard in the grass. Christian’s pretty sure he sees Papa’s head bounce off the ground when he hits, and any playing suddenly stops as most of them run toward them.

But Christian is scared, because Papa isn’t breathing. “Come on,” Sasha tells them. “Give him some space.”

“Papa,” Andre asks, his voice trembling.

Then Papa takes a deep breath, and then another. “He just knocked the wind out of himself,” Sasha explains, reaching out and helping Papa sit up. The back of his sweatshirt is streaked with grass. “He’s gonna be fine.

“It’s okay,” Papa finally says after a moment, letting Sasha help him to his feet. “No more playing soccer on the grass for me, though. At least, not when it’s wet.”

“You guys go ahead and play,” Sasha says. “Papa and I will go inside and he’s going to rest.”

“Yeah yeah,” Papa says, and laughs.

When they come inside for dinner, Papa is lying on the couch, his eyes closed. “Go wash up for dinner,” Sasha calls from the kitchen, and they all go to wash their hands and faces so they can eat.

Papa’s still on the couch when they come back. Andre climbs up and crushes himself into the space next to him.

“Papa,” he asks. “Are you okay?”

“It’s just a little headache,” Papa says, opening his eyes. “I hit my head pretty hard.”

“Are you gonna watch the movie with us before we go to bed?” Andre asks.

“No,” Papa says. “I think I’m going to go ahead and go to bed.”

He sits up, and he kisses both of them on the head. He stops in the doorway to talk to Sasha, and Sasha kisses him on the forehead before coming to settle on the couch with them.

Christian wakes up to the sound of yelling. He’s on the couch, Andre fast asleep next to him. No one else is awake, and the DVD menu playing quietly on the TV. But he can hear Papa’s voice raised in the other room, and Sasha’s too. He doesn’t know why he can’t understand what they’re saying, when their voices seem so loud. The words sound like they’re coming from underwater.

In the morning, he asks them why they were yelling, but neither of them seem to know what he’s talking about. But Sasha has bags under his eyes and Papa’s mouth is drawn into a tight, thin line.

Christian avoids them for the rest of the day.

 

Jakub can’t remember how to tie his tie.

He doesn’t think he’s worn a tie since he graduated from high school - or no, since Evgeny’s wedding. It was definitely Evgeny’s wedding. Was his tie a clip on then? Did Evgeny tie it for him? No, Dmitry tied his tie for him that day, and Jakub can remember the way Evgeny was laughing at them while they were all getting ready and Jakub was struggling to tie his tie.

He’s struggling right now and no one is laughing at him, or helping him.

Dmitry and Evgeny are downstairs talking to Dad and - well, Jakub has mixed feelings about Dad being there, because maybe some of the things that happened would have been different if Dad had been different. If Dad hadn’t been so - overwhelming and insistent and what he was telling everyone hadn’t seemed so far fetched, and if he hadn’t gone back on it in the end and let them all think that Nicke had killed himself.

Jakub doesn’t think that Nicke killed himself.

Jakub’s not sure that Andre killed himself, and he’s not sure that everyone else in the family believes that either, even though that’s what they keep saying. He watches Chris when they say it, the way Chris flinches. He doesn’t think Chris believes it any more than he does.

Chris always believed Andre. He believed Andre about the bloody-faced man when no one else did. He believed Jakub when Jakub said he wasn’t alone in the cave the day the tree fell when they were playing hide and seek.

There’s a soft knock on the door jamb and Jakub looks over to see Marcus standing in the doorway. The rest of them are wearing suits, ready to head to the funeral home, and he’s still wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Jakub almost envies that he’s not going. Jakub wishes that he wasn’t going either. He wonders if he could offer his services as a last minute babysitter.

He doesn’t think that Evgeny would let him.

“Zhenya asked me to see if you needed anything. He thought you might need help with your tie,” Marcus says. Jakub laughs, and then suddenly thinks that he might start crying.

“I don’t want to go,” he blurts out.

“I don’t think anyone wants to,” Marcus says, calm as he reaches out to tie Jakub’s tie. Jakub doesn’t really understand why they have to wear suits to the viewing, when it’s just the family, and they’ll have to wear suits all over again for the funeral. “But you have to.” 

“Are you going to start talking about closure, the way Zhenya does?” Jakub asks.

“No,” Marcus says. “But it’s the last time you’re ever going to see your brother.”

Jakub shakes his head. “That’s not him, though,” he says. His voice wavers, and his throat gets tight. 

Marcus sighs. “I don’t know how to make this better,” he says. “There’s no way any of this is ever going to be okay. And none of you should have to go through this. And if I knew what to say to make it - to make it not feel like this, believe me I would.”

He finishes with Jakub’s tie and smooths it out, tightens it up against Jakub’s chin. “I love Zhenya,” Marcus says. “And you’re my little brother now and I just. This is all terrible.”

“I wish you were going,” Jakub says, then makes a face. “Not because I want you to have to go but because I want you to be there.”

“I know. But the baby shouldn’t be there,” Marcus says.

“I know,” Jakub says.

“We got a sitter for tomorrow,” Marcus tells him. “Now come on, I can feel the horrible jokes welling up inside Zhenya from here, so let’s go save him from himself.”

 

Evgeny is half asleep with his head tilted back against the wall of the waiting room when someone touches his shoulder. He blinks, eyes bleary, when someone taps him on his shoulder.

“Sir,” says a voice. It’s a nurse in scrubs, and Evgeny remembers that he’s sitting in the waiting area of the emergency room, still wearing his own scrubs from work. “He’s going to be okay.”

“Can I see him?” Evgeny asks immediately.

“Not quite yet - he’s stabilized, but he consumed a lot of alcohol,” the nurse explains. “I know it’s scary, but this is something that we see occasionally with college students. One of the doctors will be in to discuss things further with you, but for now, I can tell you that he’s going to be alright.”

“He’s going to live,” Evgeny says, feeling numb.

“Yes sir,” the nurse says. “I’ll let you know as soon as he’s transferred to a room and you’re able to see him. They will have to keep him overnight.”

Jakub is tall and has always played sports but when Evgeny finally gets to see him, he looks small and pale in the hospital bed, hooked up to monitors with needles stuck in his arm. He’s not even awake when Evgeny comes into the room and sits down in the chair next to the bed, rubbing his hands over his face.

He needs to call his grandmother, let her know that Jakub is okay. She worries about them, he knows, her boys, all drifted so far away from her and from their father. He doesn’t have the energy to do anything but sit there.

Eventually, Jakub wakes, shifting in the hospital bed, disoriented and confused. “Where? What?” is all he manages to get out, his voice scratchy and strained.

“Alcohol poisoning,” Evgeny says. Jakub makes a noise that Evgeny can’t quite figure out. “The doctor said you’re going to be fine. But he suggested counseling, a course in. Safe drinking.”

“Oh,” Jakub says, and he turns his face away from Evgeny.

“I think you should take the counseling,” Evgeny says.

 

Things are quiet on the ride to the funeral home, and once they enter, the only sound is the soft piano music that plays in the room for the viewing. Christian stops at the back of the room, and most of the rest of them only move to the middle. It’s Dad who moves all the way forward to the front of the room with the funeral director, who opens the casket for them.

“He doesn’t look right,” Dad says, and Dmitry looks up then, not sure what the funeral director will say, not sure what anyone else will say.

Christian’s voice rings out loud from the back of the room.

“That’s because he’s dead, Alex,” he says, and Dmitry, watching his father at the front of the room, sees the flinch. Andre and Christian never called him dad, but they’d called him Sasha, when they were kids, before they moved into the house that took Christian and Andre’s papa away from them.

Dmitry never thinks about what things would be like if they’d never moved into the house, if Nicke had never died. Maybe none of them would be standing in this room. Maybe Nicke would have died some other way, maybe Andre would have. Maybe everything would have lead them to this point anyway.

Or maybe they all would have lived happily ever after. Maybe Christian would be calling Dmitry’s father dad, instead of Alex. Maybe Dmitry would have a Papa, too. Maybe ghosts aren’t real.

Dmitry feels pretty haunted, right that instant.

“I know that,” Dad says, his voice soft. “I know he’s dead, Chris.”

“We did what we could,” the funeral director says. “We suggested a closed casket because we couldn’t quite make him look... “

Not like a corpse, Dmitry thinks. Everything people say about dead bodies looking like they’re sleeping in caskets at funerals is a lie. They look like corpses. His mother had, Nicke had. And now Andre does, waxy and imperfect. Not alive.

“It doesn’t look like him,” Jakub says. He’s farther forward than Dmitry, closer to Dad. He can see what Dmitry can’t, maybe. “Are you sure? Are you sure it’s him?” His tone sounds desperate. Dmitry understands the feeling.

“I’m sure, babe,” Evgeny says, his voice soft. He reaches out and touches Jakub’s back. Jakub immediately turns away and walks out of the room, and Christian follows him.

Dmitry finally finds it in him to walk forward, to stop just where Evgeny is standing.

“I loved him the same, you know,” Dad says, standing close to the casket, looking down. “The same as the three of you. As Chris, even though I think he didn’t want me to. Andre used to call me all the time. Tell me about his classes, how he was doing. He’d tell me about things that made him happy.”

Dmitry feels his eyes start to sting at that. He hasn’t been close with his dad for a while, not since they went to live with their grandmother when Dmitry was fourteen, almost fifteen, after the house took Nicke from them. But they’ve kept in touch. He came to Dmitry’s high school and college graduations. They’ve seen each other on Thanksgiving, on Christmas. He calls on Dmitry’s birthday.

Every week he texts and tells Dmitry his thoughts on the latest episode of Dmitry’s podcast. It’s been nice, even if they’re not close.

“I would have done anything to help him,” Dad is saying. “If he’d asked.”

“We did everything we could for him,” Evgeny says. “We listened. We helped. We all loved him.”

Dmitry wonders if they really did everything. He remembers doing a series on the podcast, on the things he and his brothers experienced living in that house. He remembers talking about the banging on the walls that only he and Jakub heard, the man with the bloody face that Andre always saw. The hands that reached out for Jakub in the dark.

Andre had been upset when he heard it. He’d been upset because Dmitry had talked about it then like he believed it, when he never had when they were kids. Dmitry had told him he didn’t know what Andre saw then, just like he didn’t know what Jakub saw, or what he and Jakub heard that night. Dmitry’s not sure that he believes ghosts are real, he just likes telling ghost stories, and people like hearing them.

Andre didn’t talk to him for weeks after that.

Andre believed in ghosts. Andre believed he saw them. And now Andre was dead.

Evgeny and Dad are still talking, and Dmitry realizes that he hasn’t heard a single word that either of them have said. They’re not talking to him, besides. 

He slips out of the room, the way Christian and Jakub went before, without saying another word.

 

Nicke is half asleep when a very quiet knock on the door wakes him. Sasha’s dead to the world next to him, snoring softly. Nicke sighs and rolls out of bed and goes to the door. When he opens it, Jakub is standing on the other side.

“Kuba?” Nicke whispers. “Are you okay?” The kid shakes his head. All of the kids have been having nightmares lately. Actually, Nicke has as well. “Did you have another bad dream?”

“Yes,” Jakub tells him.

Nicke sighs, and squats down and picks the kid up. He’s the youngest, and almost too big for Nicke to do it anymore. Both of Nicke’s boys are too big for it now, but it’s nice that Jakub will let him do it, and that he’s still small enough.

Nicke carries him back down the hallway to his bedroom. The house is quiet, the only real sound a low rumble of thunder of a storm coming in. He tucks Jakub back into bed and then sits down on the edge of the mattress.

“I know nightmares are scary,” Nicke tells him. “But they’re not real. You just take a deep breath, and you keep taking deep breaths until your heart stops racing. You have to wait, because if you go back to sleep right away, you’ll go back to the dream, and you don’t want that, right?”

Jakub nods.

“But you got up, and you came down the hall, so you can’t go back to it now,” Nicke says. “Okay?”

“Will you stay here and make sure?” Jakub asks.

And Nicke doesn’t want to cram his body into Jakub’s bed with him, but he also doesn’t want to leave the kid laying alone in the dark when he knows the kid is scared. He wishes the knock had woken Sasha, so Sasha could be the one cramming his body into Jakub’s bed.

“Sure, buddy,” Nicke says. “Scoot over.”

 

“You shouldn’t have left,” Evgeny says, when they’re on their way back to his house after the viewing.

“What was me standing there accomplishing?” Dmitry answers. They’re not even out of the parking lot of the funeral home yet.

“Nothing, but Andre was your brother,” Evgeny says.

“Christian and Jakub are also my brothers,” Dmitry says. “And they’re still alive.”

“Boys,” Dad says from the back seat of the car. Evgeny flicks his eyes up to look at him. “Do you have to argue tonight? Do you have to argue about this at all?”

“No,” Evgeny says.

He says nothing for the rest of the drive. It’s a very, very quiet drive. When they get back to Evgeny’s, Christian and Jakub are already there. When they go inside, both are sat in the kitchen with Marcus and the baby. Christian is holding the baby, and Jakub is holding a drink.

“Everything for dinner is on the counter,” Marcus tells them, even as he’s getting up to put his arms around Evgeny. “You guys can help yourselves. We’ve already eaten.”

Evgeny closes his eyes for a moment, leaning his head in against Marcus’s shoulder. Then he pulls away. “Should he be drinking?” he says, his voice low. He only means for Marcus to hear it.

Marcus isn’t the only one who hears it.

“It’s just a drink, Zhenya,” Jakub says, his voice tired. “I want to have a drink and I want to go to bed and I want to stop this horrible day from happening. So don’t make a big deal about it.”

“Of all of us in here, you’re the only one of us who has had alcohol poisoning,” Evgeny says. “Who has a problem.”

“I don’t have a problem,” Jakub says, his voice tight and his mouth stubborn. He’s not looking at Evgeny.

Marcus’s fingers are gentle on Evgeny’s arm. “Don’t,” he says, his voice quiet. “Not tonight.”

“When you were a kid,” Dad says, over by the counter, piling food onto a plate. “All you wanted to do was make people laugh. You wanted everyone around you to be happy. You were cracking jokes at your mom’s funeral, hoping that it would make your brothers smile. You were never this - well, I thought for sure if one of you was going to grow up to be a worrier, to be the one who tries to parent the rest of you, it would be Dmitry.”

“Hey,” Dmitry says mildly, also standing near the food.

“Well, as it turns out I’m the only one of us who is a stable adult,” Evgeny says. “I’m the only one with a steady job and the only one everyone calls when something goes wrong.”

“That’s not true,” Christian says.

“I have a job,” Dmitry says.

“You have a podcast,” Evgeny shoots back.

“It’s a job,” Dmitry says. “Just because it’s not your job doesn’t mean it’s not a job. Just because it’s not what you would do doesn’t mean it’s a job.”

“And you think having a podcast makes you a stable adult with a job?” Evgeny says.

“Why are you attacking him?” Christian asks. “Because you’re upset at what? That Jakub is drinking? Because he’s overdone it before? Because he drinks too much because all of us are fucked up and miserable?”

“I’m not fucked up and miserable!” Evgeny says.

“Well I am,” Jakub yells back.

He pushes his chair back from the table and storms out. Evgeny moves to go after him, but Marcus stops him, shaking his head. The front door slams.

It’s Christian who gets up then, carrying the baby over to them. “I’ll make sure he’s okay,” Christian says.

“Chris,” Evgeny says. “I’m sorry. I don’t - “

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Christian says, and follows Jakub out the front door.

“I think you should apologize,” Dad says. His plate is left abandoned on the countertop and he runs his hand through his hair, making it stand up all over the place. Evgeny can see him sticking his tongue into the space where his missing tooth should be while he thinks.

“I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true,” Evgeny says.

“Babe,” Marcus says, with a sigh.

“Are you siding with them?” Evgeny asks, turning on him. Marcus doesn’t back down, cradling their daughter against his chest. She’s fussy, like she’s picking up on the tension in the room.

“I think you’re being an asshole right now because you’re stressed out,” Marcus says. “I think everyone’s upset and stressed out and everyone should have dinner and stop yelling at each other because that’s not accomplishing anything. But I’m not siding with anyone. Just stop yelling and swearing in front of the baby.”

“You just said asshole,” Evgeny points out.

“I haven’t yelled at anyone,” Marcus says, but he manages half a smile for the joke.

“That’s the Zhenya I remember. The one who makes jokes when things are uncomfortable,” Dad says.

“I’m going to lie down,” Evgeny says, and walks out of the room. Marcus trails after him with the baby. 

“I’m going to check on Kuba and Chris,” Dmitry says as he follows them out.

Evgeny is still standing in the nursery with the baby and with Marcus when Dmitry comes up the stairs.

“They’re gone,” he says.

 

“Andre!”

Papa’s voice cuts across where they’re kicking a soccer ball across the grass of the back yard, and Andre actually misses a kick and falls. Jakub starts giggling at him, and Evgeny steals the ball and starts dribbling it back down the grass toward their makeshift goal.

“Andre,” Papa calls again. “Come here now.”

Andre hauls himself to his feet and takes off running toward the house. Papa is waiting for him on the porch, frowning.

“Am I in trouble?” Andre asks, even as he’s dusting grass off of his shorts.

“Well that really depends,” Papa says, and grabs him by the wrist, pulling him inside. Papa pulls him through the house, up the stairs past the second floor and up to the attic. 

It’s a long way up and the bannister is rickety. The attic is full of old stuff the people who lived there before left behind. When Papa opens the door, it’s a disaster area. Boxes crushed, items scattered.

“Did you do this?” Papa asks him.

“I didn’t,” Andre says. “I don’t like it up here. It’s creepy.”

“Andre,” Papa says. “Please don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying! I didn’t,” Andre says.

“Andre, your sneakers are up here. I know that you’re lying,” Papa tells him. “I have a headache and I don’t feel like arguing with you.”

“But I’m not!” Andre yells.

“Andre,” Papa says, raising his voice. He puts a hand to his forehead then. “Come on, you can stay in your room until dinnertime, then decide if you want to tell the truth about what you did.”

Papa holds out Andre’s shoes. “Take them and go,” Papa tells him. “I don’t want to see you again until dinnertime.”

Andre grabs them, his eyes welled up with tears, and sprints down the stairs to his bedroom.

As he turns the corner into the hallway, he almost runs full-body into Chris. Chris somehow manages to keep them both from crashing to the floor, but it’s a very near thing.

“What’s going on?” Chris asks him. Andre’s face is streaked with tears.

“Papa found my sneakers in the attic and he thinks that I tore everything up but I didn’t,” Andre blurts out. “But his head hurts and he doesn’t believe me. He sent me to my room.”

“Hey,” Chris says. “It’s okay. Here.” Chris bends down and picks up Andre’s sneakers. As soon as his fingers touch, he drops them and jerks back like he’s touched something hot.

“Chris?” Andre says.

“Papa didn’t believe you, but I know you didn’t do it,” Chris tells him. “Just do what Papa tells you, okay? He’ll forget about it by tomorrow. Probably.”

“Okay,” Andre says.

“He’s not mad at you,” Chris says. “All that stuff is junk. He just doesn’t feel well, so he’s in a bad mood.”

Andre nods his head, picks up his shoes, and goes to his room.

 

Jakub’s phone starts ringing through the bluetooth connection in the car.

Christian is driving, his phone mounted in the holder in the dash, the map showing them the time left to get to their destination. The house. Where Andre and Nicke died. Christian wonders if it weighs as heavy on Jakub as it does on him. They were Jakub’s stepbrother and stepfather, but they were Christian’s blood. Andre was what he had left.

“It’s Zhenya,” Jakub says.

“Do you want to answer it?” Christian asks him.

“Not really,” Jakub says.

Christian hits the button to decline the call. The radio comes back, soft. Jakub asked Christian to drive when they decided to go, because he’d been drinking. The funeral is the next day, but they’re not going to go.

Instead, they’re going to drive hours away until they get to the old house. They haven’t decided what they’re going to do when they get there. Jakub wants to burn it down, to take from it everything it’s taken from them. Christian’s not sure that they’ll even be able to. He’s not sure that it won’t take them the way it took Andre.

Jakub’s phone starts ringing again. This time, it’s Dmitry’s number.

“They’re just going to keep calling until we answer,” Christian says.

“It’s just going to be Zhenya on the other end of the line being hateful again,” Jakub says.

“I think,” Christian says slowly, as the ringing fills the car around them. “I think he doesn’t mean to be. I think he’s pushed himself and stretched himself thin, and all of this is happening now and things are falling apart and he doesn’t know what to do.”

“Are you psychoanalyzing him?” Jakub asks.

“Out of habit,” Christian says. “It’s just. I remember what he was like, before Papa died. But since then I think he’s tried so hard to … be different. To be strong so that he doesn’t seem like he’s falling apart like the rest of us do. Like the rest of us are.”

“Are you falling apart?” Jakub asks.

“Every fucking second,” Christian says. “Do you want me to answer the call?”

“I guess,” Jakub says, and Christian presses the button to answer it.

“Tell me you’re not driving,” is the first thing that Evgeny says when the call connects.

“No,” Jakub responds. “Christian is.”

“Chris,” Evgeny says, and sighs. “Are you coming back tonight?”

“We’re going to the house,” Christian tells him.

“What?” Evgeny asks. Christian can hear other voices in the background. He thinks he can pick out Alex, specifically. He imagines that Evgeny has them on speaker, that Dmitry and Alex can both hear what he’s saying when he says they’re going back to the house. Maybe even Marcus, too.

“We’re going to the house,” Christian repeats, patient.

“Why?” Dmitry asks, his voice farther away from the speaker than Evgeny’s. “There’s no reason any of you should go there - Chris, just come back here. Please.”

“I think we’re going to burn it down,” Christian says. Jakub reaches out a hand and grabs Christian’s where his wrist is rested over the gear shift. They squeeze hands tightly.

“Boys,” comes Alex’s voice then, breaking in. “Boys, please don’t go there. Please. It’s already taken so much from us, don’t let it take more.”

“We’re going to burn it down,” Jakub says, then disconnects the call.

“We need to stop to get gas,” Christian says. “To burn it down.”

Jakub turns off his phone.

 

Andre sits in the driveway for a long time before he works up the courage to go inside the house. It’s dark, and it seems empty, but Andre knows that the house is never empty. Has never been empty, even when there were no people living in it. His eyes flick up to the attic windows, and for a second - 

\- just for the briefest second -

\- he imagines that he sees Papa standing in the attic window.

“Ghosts aren’t real,” he whispers to himself. That’s what Sasha told him, that’s what Evgeny told him. That’s what every therapist and psychiatrist he’s seen over the years has told him. Ghosts aren’t real. Mental disorders are what are real.

Having a mental disorder doesn’t explain anything about what Andre saw in this house, what happened the night they left, the night Papa died. It doesn’t explain the things that Jakub and Dmitry saw. It doesn’t explain - well, nothing explains Christian, not really, when you don’t believe in ghosts or psychic energy.

Andre can feel Papa watching him from the attic window, but when Andre looks back up, he’s not there.

“If ghosts aren’t real, then I’m crazy. And I’m pretty sure I’m not crazy,” Andre says out loud. “Except for I’m talking to myself right now.”

He takes a deep breath and gets out of the car.

It’s easy to get into the house. The doors are old and the house is poorly kept enough that one hard kick near the lock snaps the wood and grants Andre entry. It’s not a lot of effort, but he’s breathing hard anyway, mostly out of fear. Sure, he could have come in the daytime, but he didn’t want to wait.

“Took you long enough,” says a voice from the stairs. Andre looks up, and Papa is standing there, looking just like Andre remembers, his blond hair curling around his ears. He smiles, and it’s mostly teeth - not his real smile, something in the back of Andre’s head tells him. “I thought you were never coming in.”

“Of course I was,” Andre says.

“Come on then,” Papa says. “We have to get to work on the attic. It’s going to be fixed up soon.”

Andre starts up the stairs, and Papa reaches out and takes his hand. He wishes Papa would fold him up in his arms, hold onto him tightly like he used to do when Andre was little.

He hears other voices. There are other people - kids running down the second floor hall. He recognizes Dmitry and Jakub as they sprint past him.

“Andre,” Dmitry says, slowing down slightly, turning until he’s walking backwards away from Andre. He looks about the same age he was when they moved out of the house. “Dad says if we finish in the attic we can watch a movie. A scary one.”

“I don’t like scary ones,” Andre hears Jakub yelling, even though he’s out of sight. There’s a laugh and Dmitry disappears down the stairs.

“Come on,” Papa says. “We have to go.”

Andre follows him up the stairs. The house seems bright, perfect, normal - everything it never was in life. They get to the top of the stairs, to the attic door, and Andre turns back. It should be dark, nothing but the moon coming in through the skylight above the stairwell. Instead, it’s bright. It’s wrong, and suddenly Andre knows it’s wrong.

The second he realizes it’s wrong, everything changes. The world shifts around him, goes dark. He turns to look for Papa, has a brief glimpse of him standing there, his hair matted with blood, his face covered - dead, decayed.

Andre remembers the man with the bloody face who haunted him as a kid, who he’s started seeing again, who he saw again the night before he came here. But it was never Papa, he would have known. It’s not the man standing there on the landing with him.

He falls.

A hard, sharp shove sends him through the already-broken bannister. He hears Papa yell “no!” and even sees him move, lunge for Andre - but Papa is dead and Andre is falling.

In the moment before he hits the ground, he knows. All the times he wondered how both Papa and Christian could be psychic when he wasn’t - he was just looking for the wrong thing.

Andre has known how he was going to die since he was a child, without ever knowing. He’s seen himself, his skull caved in, the blood obscuring his own face, soaking into the thin sweatshirt he wears over his t-shirt. He never realized he was looking at himself.

It’s the last thing he knows with perfect clarity before he hits the ground.

 

“I don’t think we should go,” Evgeny is saying.

“So you’re just going to let your brothers walk in there, maybe let them get killed, because you don’t want to go?” Dmitry shoots back. They’ve been arguing for the last ten minutes since Jakub hung up on them and they discovered he turned his phone off. Christian isn’t answering them, either. Sasha thinks the arguing is a colossal waste of time that they could be spending catching up to Christian and Kubya and stopping them.

“You always gave them too much freedom, you know,” Nicke says into his ear. “You were trying to be the nice parent. Now you need to be able to tell them what to do and have them do it and they won’t.”

Sasha sighs.

“We’re wasting time,” he tells them. “Can we please just go? We’re already an hour behind them, and I can’t - “

“Don’t let it take both of my boys, Sasha,” Nicke says, his voice hard.

“I can’t let the house take Christian, too,” Sasha says. “I can’t let Nicke down so completely.”

Both Dmitry and Evgeny stop and look at him. “And Jakub? It’s okay if the house takes him?” Evgeny asks.

“It’s not,” Sasha says. “It will take him, too. But he has a better chance than Christian. What are people going to say? Oh, the whole family committed suicide the same way, the same place.”

“Only the ones who don’t think you killed me,” Nicke says, tone dry. Sasha barely suppresses a snort at that, barely keeps the smile off his face.

“Fine,” Evgeny says and grabs his keys off the counter, heading for the front door. “But if I die I’m haunting all of you. I’m going to sneak in your bathrooms and flush every toilet while you shower.”

“Well now it won’t be a surprise,” Dmitry says.

“Zhenya,” Sasha says suddenly. “You have to tell your daughter goodbye. Just in case.”

“No,” Evgeny says, and shakes his head, halfway out the door. “No just in case. Only coming back.”

“He’s just as stubborn as you are,” Nicke says, drifting with them out the door to Evgeny’s car.

 

Evgeny is dreaming that Dad is calling his name.

A rough shake wakes him, and Dad is at his bedside. “Zhenya,” he’s saying. “Zhenya you have to get up, we need to go. Put on your shoes. Don’t worry about putting on your clothes.”

Evgeny is groggy and confused but he does as he’s told. He’s never heard his father’s voice sound that way, urgent - scared. Dad sounds scared, and it makes Evgeny feel scared. He pulls his sneakers on with his pajamas.

Dad is waiting for him by the bedroom door. The door is closed.

“We’re going to be very quiet and we’re going to move very fast and you’re going to keep your eyes straight ahead and look at nothing but the front door,” Dad tells him. He takes hold of Evgeny’s hand in his, gripping it so tightly that it hurts.

They wait. Evgeny doesn’t understand what Dad is waiting for, but he seems to be waiting to hear something. When he does, he turns the knob and runs out into the hall, moving faster than Evgeny can keep up. Dad half-drags him down the hallway and down the stairs together. Evgeny is too afraid not to do what he’s told, and keeps his eyes locked on the front door, open to the darkness beyond.

He stumbles off the last stairs and Dad doesn’t wait for him to get his feet back under him, just hauls him across the foyer and to the front door. Evgeny can see Dmitry sprinting across the grass to the car. He can see silhouettes huddled together in the back seat of the car in the security light on the pole near the end of the driveway.

He starts to turn his head, and Dad shoves him hard. “Don’t look back,” he says. “Get in the car. Run like your life depends on it.”

Evgeny’s not sure it doesn’t.

He flings himself into the empty middle seat of the SUV and slams the door behind him. Dad drops the keys trying to get them into the ignition once, twice, before he gets the engine started. Christian is in the back seat with Andre and Jakub. Both of them are crying, Jakub’s face pressed into Christian’s back and Christian’s arms around Andre. He meets Evgeny’s eyes, the blue gone dark in the security light.

Dad is repeating “don’t look back,” under his breath. If Evgeny keeps his eyes on Christian, then he’s not looking back. 

He pretends he can’t see the shapes moving in the windows of the house behind him.

 

They park the car in front of the house and they both sit there, without moving. Christian kills the engine, then there’s only the sound of their breathing.

Jakub knows that Dad and Evgeny and Dmitry won’t be far behind them. It took ages at the gas station to fill up their newly purchased gas cans. He’s sure the gas station attendant should have called the cops on them, but he doesn’t think the cops in this area will have any problem with this particular arson.

“We need to go,” Christian says, but he doesn’t move. His face is tilted up, and Jakub thinks he must be watching the attic windows on the front of the house. They’ve always looked like eyes to Jakub. The house is watching them now. Jakub is afraid to look up and find out that it’s not just the house watching them.

“Yeah,” Jakub agrees. He doesn’t move either.

Christian takes a deep breath, holds it, then lets it out slowly. It’s a breathing exercise that Jakub recognizes from some of his counseling sessions. Jakub reaches over and grabs Christian’s fingers in his, squeezing them tightly before letting go and taking a deep breath of his own.

Then he gets out of the car.

They get the gas cans out of the trunk and the matches out of the back seat. Andre’s car is still sitting parked in the driveway. There’s police tape across the front door warning trespassers to keep out. The front door is broken, and Jakub guesses that’s how Andre got in, by breaking the lock. Christian tears the police tape out of the way and looks at Jakub for the briefest moment before going inside.

“Let’s do this and get out of here,” Christian whispers, but his whisper carries in the silence of the foyer. He pops the top off his gas can and starts emptying it, splashing the gasoline onto the walls, onto the stairs.

Jakub takes the top off of his and starts to do the same. He comes to a stop on the far side of the room from Christian, and he’s suddenly glad Christian went the other way.

There’s still blood on the floor where Andre fell. Where he jumped, if Jakub believed what the police told Christian, but there’s never been a second Christian has believed that, and Jakub doesn’t think that he does either. The blood is black in the half-light from the moon and Jakub thinks it’s dry, but he’s not going to check.

He’s sure that he’s only imagining that he can see older marks, an older puddle of blood that must have been where Nicke fell years ago. The thought makes bile crawl up the back of his throat.

“It’s only your imagination,” a voice says, and Jakub spins around, dropping his gas can.

“Andre?” he asks, his voice coming out a terrified squeak.

It is Andre standing there. Not Andre like Jakub remembers him, or Andre as Jakub saw him last, but Andre as he must have been between then - his face covered in blood, his head caved in at the side. Jakub feels his stomach twist and this time it’s more than bile at the back of his throat. At least he turns away from Andre as he throws up, even though, immediately after he does it he’s not sure it matters.

“Jakub?” Christian asks, his voice too close. “What’s wrong? Are you - “

Christian’s voice trails off mid-sentence, and Jakub looks for him even as he’s wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt.

“Don’t come over here,” Andre says. Jakub can see the look on Christian’s face, and he doesn’t think he likes it. “You don’t need to see. Jakub threw up on it, anyway.”

“Your blood,” Christian says, his voice quiet, flat. “Where you fell.”

“Yes,” Andre says.

“Where Papa fell,” Christian says.

“You should leave,” another voice says, and Jakub and Christian turn toward it, looking up the stairs to see Nicke standing halfway up. “I don’t want it to take you, too.”

“Papa,” Christian says. His voice sounds like he might start crying any second. Jakub stays still as Nicke descends the stairs, as he wraps his arms around his oldest son.

“Please go,” Nicke says. “It won’t let you destroy it. It can only hurt you. It wants you, too.”

“It wants to complete the set,” Andre says.

“I want to destroy it,” Jakub hears Christian say, his voice muffled by Nicke’s body. Like Nicke is real.

“I know, baby,” Nicke tells him. “I wanted to, too. But it was too late.”

Jakub watches Christian lift the box of matches, hears them rattle as Christian opens it with shaking hands. Nicke’s hands leave smears of blood on the white dress shirt Christian was wearing with his suit, and on his face. It takes him three times to strike the match.

The door slams shut behind them and everything goes pitch black.

 

The house is quiet when Sasha lets himself back through the front door. He’s not sure what he expected, maybe that Nicke would be rampaging through the halls, destroying everything since Sasha fled and took the kids. He doesn’t expect the house to be silent.

Like death.

Like Nicke, lying on the stone of the foyer, curls shiny in the moonlight. Sasha’s beautiful, perfect Nicke, blood spreading out around him, debris from the broken bannister scattered across the floor.

“Nicke,” Sasha whispers, before he can move. It feels like his feet are glued to the floor, and when he can finally move it feels like running underwater, like the universe is conspiring to keep him from Nicke.

The blood soaks through his pants immediately, no longer warm. Sasha barely notices that, lifting Nicke’s body up off the floor and into his arms, cradling him against his chest. Nicke’s head lolls back, blood smears across his face. Sasha tries to wipe it away, but makes it worse, his hands already covered in blood.

“I’m sorry,” Sasha whispers to him. “I’m sorry we didn’t leave sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. I’m sorry I didn’t believe the boys.”

“It was a hard thing to believe,” Nicke says. Sasha startles badly, but it’s not the body in his arms that speaks.

Nicke is standing there next to him, just outside the pool of blood, looking down at Sasha holding onto his body. He’s as clean and perfect as Sasha remembers him, the moonlight shining on his hair.

“I should have,” Sasha says. “I should have believed you.”

“Maybe,” Nicke says. “This isn’t your fault, Sasha.”

“I found the house,” Sasha says. “I wanted to come see it.”

“I should have known that there was something wrong with it,” Nicke says. “I could have said something, and I didn’t.”

“We should have left when the kids started having nightmares,” Sasha says.

“Sasha,” Nicke says. “Please.”

“This is all my fault,” Sasha says.

“You didn’t fill this house with evil, Sasha,” Nicke says. “We only tried to fill this house with love.”

“I know,” Sasha says.

“You have to leave before it tries to take you too,” Nicke says. “Sasha, please.”

“I don’t want to leave you here,” Sasha tells him.

“You have to. You have to go and you have to take care of the boys,” Nicke says. “You have to promise me that you’ll take care of my boys just like you’d take care of yours. They won’t have their father anymore but they’ll have you.”

“Nicke,” Sasha says. “I love you.”

“I know,” Nicke says. “I love you too. But you have to go.”

Sasha gently lowers Nicke’s body back to the floor, but the blood has soaked through his pants and into his shirt. It’s all over his hands. He hesitates, looking down at Nicke, lying there crumpled on the floor, lifeless. Gone forever.

But not gone, not really. Trapped forever in this house, doomed to watch his husband and children leave and not be able to do anything about it. Even now, his ghost is standing there, watching Sasha as he leaves Nicke’s body on the floor and stands to leave.

“Please be safe. And keep them safe for me,” Nicke tells him. He grips the front of Sasha’s shirt, kisses him roughly on the lips, then shoves him toward the door.

Sasha steps outside the door. He casts one glance back at Nicke, and sees him looking up toward the balcony he fell from.

Sasha imagines a dark shape in the shadows.

 

The front door won’t open.

Evgeny knows the lock is broken, because he knows how Andre broke in. He also knows that Christian and Jakub must be inside, because the police tape is torn away and Jakub’s car is parked empty in the driveway, right next to Andre’s abandoned car.

They should be able to get into the house with ease.

“Let’s just break a window,” Dmitry says.

“That will just upset it,” Dad says. “And it’s already angry that the gasoline has spilled everywhere. It’s… riled.”

“It’s a house,” Evgeny says, irritated.

“You know by now it’s more than that,” Dad says, tired.

“It’s not. It’s just fucking wood and brick and wire and - and - whatever the fuck else makes up a house,” Evgeny says, frustrated. He kicks the door, trying the same thing that Andre must have done. Nothing budges, so the only thing he accomplishes is hurting himself.

Dad sighs. “Nicke, make it let us in,” he says, and reaches out and puts a hand on the door. It opens in front of them, like all it took was Dad’s touch. Evgeny looks at him, bewildered.

“How?” he says.

“I asked,” Dad says. “I know Nicke won’t want Christian to get hurt, and if he’s in there, he’s going to get hurt.”

“We’re going to have a long talk later about how you’ve clearly lost your mind,” Evgeny says. It’s not a nice thing to say, but he’s pretty sure he means it.

“I think you’ll change your mind,” Dad says, even as they’re walking into the house.

The foyer is empty, the smell of gasoline strong. Anywhere they step, they’re stepping in gasoline. There’s a box of matches abandoned in the center of the room, just at the foot of the stairs. Evgeny doesn’t understand why, if they made it this far, they didn’t just finish the job and leave.

“The attic,” Dmitry says suddenly.

“Yes,” Dad says. “The attic.”

They start up the stairs, moving fast. Evgeny follows them, and turns around to look back, over the bannister. There’s a dark splotch on the floor that Evgeny is pretty sure is Andre’s blood, and another splatter that he thinks might be vomit. He doesn’t want to think about it too much.

Suddenly he feels overwhelmed, like he wants to sit down, cover his face with his hands, and cry. Both his stepfather and his brother died in this room. It’s too much to think about, too much to handle.

“Zhenya,” Dad’s voice comes softly, from above him. “Come on. We have to get them out of here.”

Evgeny looks up at him, at his offered hand, and he reaches up and takes it. Dad’s hand wrapped around his like a child makes the overwhelming feeling go away. He follows them the rest of the way up the stairs.

The attic is still crowded with junk and dusty, but everything is pushed away from the center. Evgeny wonders who moved the stuff away from the center - if Nicke did it the night everything went off the rails, if he moved it all in a fit of whatever motivated him to jump off the balcony. Christian is sprawled in the open space, eyes closed, like someone carried him up and dumped him there. Jakub is propped up against some of the boxes, his eyes closed.

Jakub opens his eyes when they come through the door, but Christian doesn’t move.

“Don’t come in!” Jakub yells.

It’s too late. The door slams shut behind Evgeny. He turns immediately, tries to pull it open. The knob won’t even turn, like it’s locked from the other side. He slams his shoulder into it, even though kicking the door didn’t work downstairs. Again, he only hurts himself.

“Is he dead?” Dmitry whispers.

Jakub shakes his head.

“I don’t think so. The house did something, when he lit the match,” Jakub explains. “Everything went dark, and when I could see again, we were in here.”

There shouldn’t be power to the house, Evgeny realizes, but there’s one bare lightbulb illuminating the attic. It makes Christian look dead, lying so still on the floor. Jakub doesn’t look much better, curled up against the wall, his knees clutched to his chest.

Evgeny takes a deep breath and steps forward. He’s a doctor. Sure, he only works with dead bodies, most of the time, but he’s still a doctor. He can make sure that Christian is okay. He can make sure that they make it through this, that they get out alive. He kneels down next to Christian, checks his pulse. Strong. Alive. Good.

“We have to figure out how to get out of here,” he says. “If he couldn’t light the match, we’re not going to be able to break the windows.

“Nicke,” he hears his father call out, and turns to see Dad standing at the door. His hand is on the knob. “Nicke, I’ll stay here. I’ll give myself to the house if it lets the boys go.

“It doesn’t want that,” comes a voice, disembodied at first, and then Evgeny tastes his heart in his throat when he realizes that Nicke is sitting there on top of an old desk, his legs swinging gently.

“Are you real?” Evgeny asks.

“Will it make you feel better to pretend I’m not?” Nicke asks, and his voice sounds so real that Evgeny has to close his eyes. “I know you don’t want to believe in ghosts, Zhenya. But how are you going to explain what you’re seeing right now?”

“Don’t say shared hallucination,” Dmitry says.

“I don’t know,” Evgeny says, and opens his eyes again, looking up at Nicke. “I can’t explain this.”

“It’s easier to think it’s not real,” Nicke says. “It’s easy to think that I killed myself. That I hit my head that day we were playing soccer, and I was sick after that, that it triggered some kind of manic episode. But why can’t you open the door? Why couldn’t you open a door you knew was broken? How are we having this conversation now?”

“I don’t know,” Evgeny repeats, and it comes out as a sob.

“Be gentle, Nicke,” Dad says from behind him. “He never learned to be gentle with himself.”

“I wouldn’t wish him seeing his own death over and over and over his whole life and never knowing,” Nicke says. “I wouldn’t wish half the things Christian’s seen and felt on him. I wouldn’t wish the fear that Jakub’s always tried to hide on him. I wouldn’t - “ Evgeny watches Nicke’s chest move with the exhale of breath, like he’s real, and not a ghost sitting there talking to Evgeny’s face.

“He knows,” Dad says. “Now. He knows.”

“I saw you in the windows,” Evgeny finally says. “The night we left. I knew that I saw something, even though Dad told me not to look back. I turned around to look at Christian in the back seat, but I couldn’t help it.”

“You didn’t see me,” Nicke says. “You saw it.”

“What?” Evgeny asks.

“The thing that lives in the house,” Nicke says. “The reason we’re all here.”

“I don’t understand why I can’t sacrifice myself for them to go,” Dad says. “I’m willing. I’m offering.”

There’s a disembodied laugh. Evgeny is still watching Nicke, but the light dims overhead and Nicke changes. Now, he has blood all over him. It’s the way he must have looked when he died, before they cleaned him up, before Evgeny last saw him in his casket at the funeral.

Jakub screams as something grabs at him, and he slides toward the center of the room where Evgeny is knelt with Christian.

“No!” Evgeny hears Dad yell, and suddenly someone slams into him from behind. It’s Dmitry, shoved away from the door and into the center of the room with the rest of them.

“Sasha!” Nicke screams, a nightmare dripping blood and brains.

“Take me instead,” Sasha screams.

There’s an explosion, and the light above them shatters as the door bangs open.

“Run!” Nicke screams.

Dmitry and Evgeny struggle to their feet, tugging Christian’s limp body up between them. Jakub is on his feet and out the door ahead of them. He slips once he hits the landing, and slides toward the gaping hole in the bannister as though the floor is tilted. 

Evgeny feels helpless, like they’re going to lose Jakub to the house the same way they lost Nicke and Andre, and there’s nothing he can do but watch Jakub’s fingers scrabble at the scuffed up wood floors as he falls.

It’s Dmitry that lets go of Christian, lets his limp body sag against Evgeny as he lunges forward to grab Jakub’s hands. Suddenly, Jakub stops sliding, like the floor knows it can’t force him through the railing once another person has intervened.

“Get down the stairs,” Dmitry says. “Be careful not to fall. Hold onto the bannister.”

Dmitry comes back to Evgeny then, and works himself back underneath Christian’s arm. They don’t have a way to hold onto the bannister between them, and with Christian weighing them down, it’s slower going.

Unfortunately, the foyer is also on fire.

“I lit the matches,” a voice says to Evgeny’s right, and he looks in that direction to see Andre descending the stairs next to him. “I didn’t know that I could. But the house is mad.”

There’s blood on Andre’s face and clothes and Evgeny remembers all the times Andre told them about the man with the bloody face, and what Nicke said upstairs, about seeing his own death over and over again. It casts everything he knows about Andre in a new light.

It’s so hot by the time they reach the foyer that they’re already sweating and it’s hard to hold onto Christian. By the time they reach the front door, and out and onto the porch, they’re singed, and they stop and let Andre pat down Christian’s clothes where they’re starting to catch fire from where Evgeny and Dmitry dragged him across the floor. 

“I think we have to get off the porch,” Andre says.

They carry Christian down the front steps to the driveway. As soon as they step off the bottom step, his eyes open and he lifts his head up, struggling against them until they let go and he walks under his own power.

“Andre,” he whispers.

“Hi,” Andre says. He still has blood on his sweatshirt but the blood is gone from his face and hair. Christian raises a hand up and touches it gently to Andre’s head, burying his fingers in the hair over the place the funeral director had to reconstruct.

“Are you real?” Christian asks.

“I think so,” Andre says.

The noise that comes out of Christian then couldn’t be called anything but a sob as he throws his arms around Andre and holds onto him tightly. Jakub follows suit, throwing his arms around both of them.

“I have to go back for Dad,” Evgeny says.

“You can’t,” Andre says, from where he’s buried under the arms of his brothers. “You can’t, you don’t know that it will let you out.”

“But Dad - “ Evgeny starts.

“Zhenya,” Dmitry says quietly, his arms also wrapped tightly around what he can reach of Christian, Andre, and Jakub. “He made the choice. If the choice was to get us out and stay there, that was what he wanted. For us to be safe.”

It’s too cold outside even with the house burning to stay outside, and they climb into Jakub’s car. Zhenya sits in the passenger seat, staring at the flames. Jakub, Christian, and Andre cram into the back seat, Andre sandwiched in the middle, with neither he nor Christian willing to let go of each other.

No one comes to put out the fire.

They sit in silence, watching shadows moving in the flames. Eventually, the boys in the back seat doze off, and Evgeny looks at them every once in awhile in the rearview mirror. Andre’s head is leaned against Christian’s chest, and Christian’s head against the top of Andre’s. Jakub is leaned over with his head on Andre’s shoulder, and Evgeny feels his heart ache. He can’t believe they have Andre back. He keeps expecting him to evaporate as the night starts to go grey as they inch toward morning.

Even Dmitry has dozed off against the window of the driver’s door by the time the sky starts to truly lighten. Evgeny is almost asleep as well, even though he feels like they have to keep watch, a vigil for the death of something that took so much from them, first their father and brother and now their fathers.

Evgeny thinks he’s seeing shadows again, just as the sun is starting to come up, but they coalesce and something starts to walk out of the fire.

No, not something. Someone.

Two someones, their hands clasped together, walk out of the front of the house where the front wall around the doorway has fallen away to the porch. At first, Evgeny thinks he’s seeing things, or he’s seeing ghosts again. No one could have stayed in the house as long as it’s been burning and walk out alive.

But it’s his father, still wearing his suit from the viewing, a little wrinkled, a little dusty, a little worse for wear, his gray hair a mess and sticking up in every direction. And holding onto his hand - 

\- walking away from the house with him - 

\- hand in hand with him - 

\- alive - 

\- is Nicke. Nicke, wearing the same pajamas as the night they fled the house, dirty and singed and still soaked with blood. Nicke, who Evgeny saw upstairs with his face covered and hair matted with blood, now clean and shining and golden and just like Evgeny remembers him.

Evgeny scrambles out of the car, startles Dmitry and sprints across the grass to them. Dad opens his arms to hug him, but Evgeny flings himself into Nicke’s arms instead, to Nicke’s surprise. Dad’s arms come to wrap around the two of them, instead, and Dmitry crashes into them shortly after.

“You saved all of us,” Evgeny says. Nicke just laughs.

“Let’s get out of here,” Nicke says.

 

The sun is well above the horizon by the time they pile into the cars and drive away from the smoldering ruin of the house.

Dmitry goes back to the car and wakes up Christian, Jakub, and Andre, and it takes ages for Andre to stop crying over the fact that Nicke is there, and real, and alive.

“You were dead like, five hours ago,” Evgeny points out.

This makes Christian’s eyes go wide. “Your funeral is today,” he says.

“What happens if I’m alive, though?” Andre says. “Does my body disappear? Is me dying erased from everyone’s memory?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Sasha says. He’s leaned back against the side of Zhenya’s car, his arm around Nicke’s waist, Nicke pulled back against him.

“I could call Marcus and find out,” Evgeny suggests. “Either he’s going to remember there’s a funeral today, or he’s not going to know Andre ever died.”

“Who’s Marcus?” Nicke asks.

“Oh Nicke,” Sasha says. “You don’t know. He’s Zhenya’s husband. He’s at home with the baby.”

“We have a grandbaby?” Nicke says, turning to look at Sasha.

“She’s new,” Evgeny says. “Ten weeks on Monday.”

“Oh,” Nicke says. “I want to meet her.”

“As soon as we figure things out, you can meet everyone,” Sasha tells him. “If nobody remembers you died, then we just have to figure out how to introduce you. Or how to explain Andre didn’t really die.”

“What if there’s a funeral still and the casket is empty? His body just disappeared?” Jakub asks.

“I’m not asking Marcus to check if there’s a body in the casket,” Evgeny says. “I have to draw the line somewhere.”

“You’ll have to meet Marcus and the baby and Madison and Varvara and -” Andre rattles off, but Nicke cuts him off.

“Slow down, who are Madison and Varvara?” Nicke asks.

“My boyfriend,” Jakub says. “And Dima’s girlfriend.”

“Anyone else I need to meet?” Nicke asks.

“I’m not seeing anyone seriously,” Andre says.

“I just broke up with my girlfriend,” Christian says, and shrugs. “Or she broke up with me. Whatever, she was mad I spent so much time studying.”

“You’re still in school?” Nicke asks.

“He’s getting his doctorate,” Sasha says, proud.

“Babe,” Nicke says, grinning, and reaches out, pulling Christian in against him, hugging him tightly. “I’m so proud of you.”

Christian is blushing furiously and trying to pry himself away from Nicke while everyone else laughs.

“Can we go get food?” Andre asks. “I’m starving.”

They end up at a diner an hour away from Evgeny’s house. Everyone else goes in and sits to order, while Evgeny stays in the car to call home. They’re loud and excited and receive more than a few glares from the early morning clientele filling the diner. Sasha and Nicke are still holding hands, and Christian hasn’t let go of Andre except to get through the door. Andre is sandwiched between Christian and Jakub, who don’t seem to be interested in letting him go.

They’ve all ordered coffee and are considering ordering without Evgeny when he finally joins them.

“So there’s a slight problem,” he says. “Marcus definitely remembers you’re both dead. Also he wants to know if we’re going to make the funeral.”

“But I’m alive,” Andre protests.

“Did he check the casket?” Jakub asks. “Maybe there’s no body.”

“Sure, I asked my husband to go to the funeral home and have the director open up the casket so he could peek inside and make sure there’s a body,” Evgeny says, deadpan. “Right after I explained to him how the haunted house I lived in as a kid burned down and now my brother and stepfather aren’t actually dead, surprise!”

“Okay well,” Jakub says, blushing and ducking his head.

“Zhenya, be nice,” Sasha says,

“So what do we do?” Dmitry asks. Everyone goes silent as the waitress comes to take their orders. They can have breakfast while they figure out how to deal with the world still believing that Nicke and Andre are dead.

“We can move somewhere new and get fake identities,” Andre suggests after a while.

“Sure, because this is a movie and you can just get a fake identity whenever you want one,” Jakub says.

“You bought a fake ID off the internet so you could buy beer,” Andre shoots back. Sasha’s eyebrows go up, and so do Zhenya’s. “Ow!” Andre yelps when Jakub pinches him.

“I didn’t,” Jakub says.

“You can definitely buy a fake identity on the internet,” Christian says with a yawn. “Or on the dark web or something.”

“That sounds … like you’re making it up, honestly,” Nicke says.

“The dark web is a thing,” Andre and Dmitry say, almost in unison.

“It’s actually not a bad idea,” Sasha says. “I sell my house, we move somewhere new. You get new identity, take my last name. If you want.”

“That would probably be okay,” Nicke says, leaning into Sasha. Jakub makes a quiet gagging noise, and Andre giggles.

“Andre could come,” Sasha says. “Enroll in a new school. Then no one will know that he’s supposed to be dead.”

“Well, at least it seems like a plan,” Nicke says.

 

They end up going to Andre’s funeral.

They make it back to Evgeny’s house with time for showers and to change clothes, but barely, since there are seven of them and they’re all disgusting. The only problem is that Marcus seems pretty sure they’re playing some kind of prank on him.

“There’s no way this is real,” he says. Evgeny still needs to shower and Marcus is still in his pajamas. “This is by far the worst prank you’ve ever tried to pull.”

“You know Andre though,” Evgeny says. “You know that’s him.”

“But I don’t understand _how_ ” Marcus says, exasperated. Their daughter fusses in his arms.

“Magic,” Nicke says. “As the short version. There’s no good explanation for it. I wish there were, because it would make all of this easier. But I’ve also been a ghost for ten years.”

“This is weird,” Marcus says. “And I don’t think I like it.”

“I didn’t like being dead much,” Andre says. Marcus looks a little bit like he’s going to pass out.

“They need to stay here while we go to the funeral,” Evgeny explains. “In a perfect world, Andre never would have died. Well, Nicke never would have died and none of this ever would have happened, but then maybe I never would have met you. So this is life now. Will you let our daughter meet her grandfather?”

Marcus looks at Nicke, skeptical.

“Please?” Evgeny asks.

“Fine, but I want the whole explanation later, Evgeny,” Marcus says, standing up. He passes the baby gently into Nicke’s arms.

“I never thought I was going to have grandkids,” Nicke says, looking at her. He touches her tiny face with his fingertips. “Sasha.”

“I know,” Sasha says, and leans in and kisses Nicke on the temple. “I know.”

 

 

The snowball hits Evgeny in the center of his chest and he hears a laugh cut through the air. A black jacket is disappearing around the side of the cabin.

He’s glad it’s going to be a white Christmas but he’s not pleased that one of his brothers has attacked him before he’s even closed his car door. He slams his car door and starts off across the snow.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Marcus yells after him, even though they’re not supposed to be cursing because both of the kids repeat it now. “Help me with all our shit.”

“I have to get revenge,” Evgeny yells, almost to the corner of the house, his boots crunching in the snow.

“I want a divorce,” Marcus yells after him.

Another snowball nails Evgeny in the leg as he comes around the corner of the house. Jakub is flinging them with abandon from near the shed. Madison is crouched down, packing snowballs together as quickly as Jakub can throw them. The bulk of them don’t seem to be aimed at Evgeny, just enough intended to entice him into the fight.

The snowballs mostly seem to be directed toward the woodpile, where occasionally Evgeny can see Dmitry’s head pop up as he throws a snowball toward Jakub. The snowball that hits Jakub square in the face and makes him yelp doesn’t come from Dmitry, though. It comes from the back porch, and Evgeny looks over to see Christian standing there, his arms crossed over his chest.

“Papa says the hot chocolate is ready,” he yells down at all of them. Then he notices Evgeny. “Hi Zhenya.”

Evgeny waves.

Sasha makes hot cocoa from scratch, and it’s the best any of them have ever had. He got the recipe from his mother, who got it from - well, she’s never told him. But it’s perfect for Christmas and Christmas Eve and all of them being gathered together at Sasha and Nicke’s cabin for the first time since Nicke came back from the dead two years before. It’s their whole family, everyone’s partners, all of their kids

Andre corners Christian between Christmas movies, when they’re refilling their hot cocoa in the kitchen.

“When are you going to bring someone home?” Andre teases him. “Don’t you want to be happy?”

Christian looks up from his mug and he smiles. “Andre,” he says, and puts the mug down on the counter. “I don’t need a partner to make me happy. It would be nice, but I’m happy on my own.”

“Really?” Andre asks, skeptical.

“Really,” Christian says, and reaches out and wraps his arms around Andre. He tucks his nose into Andre’s shoulder, too short now to bury his face in Andre’s hair like he did when they were kids. “That’s not what’s important to me right now. Maybe one day, but not now.”

“What’s important to you?” Andre asks.

“You,” Christian says. “Being able to be here with you and Papa and everyone else. Finishing school and finding a job.”

“You’re gonna be a doctor so soon,” Andre says, and grins at him.

“I know,” Christian says. “And don’t you fucking forget it.”

Andre laughs as they make their way back into the living room to curl up for the next Christmas movie.

**Author's Note:**

> \- major character death: two major characters die in the course of this fic. not sort of major characters, not kind of major characters. if you've seen hill house, you know that the mother is only seen as a ghost and in flashbacks, and a major character in this story plays that role.  
> \- suicide tw: the major character deaths are thought to be suicides by law enforcement; it is later established that both deaths were murder, but there is a lot of very frank discussion of one character's mental state leading up to his supposed suicide  
> \- alcohol abuse: due to his experiences, one character self-medicates with alcohol, and there is an incident where he drinks himself into hospitalization. it is a source of contention between several of the characters.  
> \- body horror/graphic description of post-mortem bodies: after both character deaths occur, there are descriptions of what happened to their bodies. i.e., broken bones, blood, etc. 
> 
>  
> 
> on twitter @ notedgoon


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